Camera Expert anyone?

[Jetl3on]

I want a compact point and shoot pocket camera for night shots, with a wide angle lens, but not suer what to look for, how do I tell if a camera that has these advertised options is actually any good, what do I look for?

For example im looking at the Samsung P1200 at currys for £99, it says wide angle, but is it....

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/234260

Thx

I have been advised to get an SLR, but it is not for me.

[mybrainhurts]

Get an SLR....

HTH...

[Mill Wheel]

LUMIX

[Tunku]

Jetl3on said:

I want a compact point and shoot pocket camera for night shots, with a wide angle lens, but not suer what to look for, how do I tell if a camera that has these advertised options is actually any good, what do I look for?

For example im looking at the Samsung P1200 at currys for £99, it says wide angle, but is it....

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/234260

Thx

I have been advised to get an SLR, but it is not for me.

I just got a Fujifilm Finepix S1000fd, macro to zoom. Not quite pocket but I like it.

[Simpo Two]

12,000,000 pixels on the head of a pin and you want night shots? No.

Regrettably unable to suggest anything other than send you to the dpreview.com site as ^^^

[Holst]

For night shots compact cameras are going to be pretty poor.

The best high end camera will be the Lumix LX3 which has a wideangle lense and has quite good low light performance.
But if your budget is only £100 then your not going to get good nightime performance.

[VxDuncan]

Really the best way would be an SLR as said. This isn't snobbery, but due to the limitations of moderncompacts.

Basically it's all down to signal to noise ratios. Small lens, small sensor means very little signal (light) and with more and more pixels that signal is spread ever more thinly. Basically the more pixels for a given area the more noise you get as the pixels get ever smaller. Really you want a good low light camera you want a really big sensor with very few pixels.

In a compact a pixel count much above 5mp is a waste anyway as the optics of the lens are unable to resolve more than this. The rest are for marketing purposes...

I'd look for:
As big a diameter lens as you can find
with as a big a sensor as possible (if that info is listed)
with as few MP as possible

Then you won't be battling physics. After that optical image stabilisation is useful.

As an aside Hubbles' (2nd gen) wide field and planetary imaging camera consists of only four CCD sensor of 0.64MP each, ie 2.5MP total. Seems okay performance as far as low light goes.